Alchemist
2006
When my days process and extrude me
like so much shredded wheat
bailed and tasting of cardboard
on a plate of offering to the lesser
gods of necessity, trouble, and angst,
bold as any noonday thief
you slip me away yet crumbling,
back out into the field,
the sun, the sweep of sky
and hold me into wholeness again,
lighted grain, arcing stem, living root.
This sort of miracle I’ve known otherwise
only in old film reels run backward
to undo undoable fates.
“What alchemy is this?” I wonder
as caresses like sonorous breezes
lift us once more as one
into golden dance.
(Image used with permission from the Shoal Lake Regional Community Development Corporation.)